I hardly know where to begin, so much has happened…So I guess I’ll try to start from where I last left off, more or less at the beginning.

Decided to clean out my closet and dressers on Thursday, and wound up with 6-8 large trash bags filled with clothes that I am certain I will never wear. As a result my closet is no longer jam packed and I freed up one entire drawer in one of my dressers! Will be hauling all the clothes (along with lots of other ‘stuff’) down to Goodwill tomorrow.

The contractor who will be installing my new windows showed up Saturday to do a bit of prep work. He sawed off all our outside windowsills! Then he applied stucco over all the raw edges so there will be that much less to do when he starts the actual installation. I need to dig around in the garage tomorrow to find the leftover paint so that I can touch it up before he gets started in a few weeks.

Played Texas Hold ’em poker last Saturday night with Patrick, Lisa, Nader, Phil and Vanessa. Without going into all the gory details, suffice it to say I had a great night, coming away with $40! We all pay $20 to play, so I doubled my investment. Wish I could find another fun thing that would allow me to double my investment in a little over 5 hours!

On Sunday, I decided I had had it with the ugly carpet in my bedroom and started ripping it out. The padding underneath had disintegrated with age and was a powdery mess in some places and had turned almost glue-like in others. I literally had to scrape it off the hardwood floors. Ah yes, the floors. They are beautiful parquet, matching the rest of the house except for the black goo splattered everywhere! I think a prior owner decided to use that room as the staging area when they installed the tile floors in the bathrooms and kitchen. And they weren’t very neat. And that’s an understatement! Not quite sure how I’m going to get rid of all the black spots, splatters and streaks. I might use this as an excuse to get a new sander! Got about 2/3 of the carpet removed and will finish all but the part under the waterbed this weekend. Gotta totally dismantle the waterbed to get rid of the rest and am not ready to start on that right before leaving for vacation.

Was not at all ready to head back to work on Monday, knowing how much I needed to do this week. And the week surpassed my expectations, being extremely brutal and ending today with a major snafu with payroll that totally destroyed all my plans for getting lots accomplished today. Straightened it all out and everyone got paid what they were supposed to get, but spent about 5+ hours cleaning up the mess. None of my ‘extra’ projects got more than a passing glance. Normally I would say, ‘Oh well, there’s always next week.’ But next week consists of only 3 days during which I absolutely must pay all the bills and get out the payroll for mid-August in order to leave Thursday morning to fly to Ohio! I have a feeling I’ll be getting to work early and leaving late at least on Monday and Tuesday.

Then there was the ‘surprise’ in my kitchen Wednesday night…ants. I went out there at about 10:30 to set up the coffee for the next day and decided to refill the cats’ dry food dishes. I reached down to the floor only to find the dishes covered with ants. They were coming in through a closed window, through a small slit where the top and bottom parts of the window meet. Then they trailed across the windowsill, across the wall, down the trim along the doorway and into the food dish. Out came the ant spray, resulting in about a thousand little dead bodies on my window, walls, and floor. I cleaned up a big bunch of them, but must finish up dealing with the departed souls tomorrow morning…

As I mentioned earlier, am headed back East for a bit of a vacation on Thursday. Will start with a trip to the Fenton Glass Factory early next Friday morning and then will head down to Raleigh, NC for my niece, Harmony’s, wedding on Saturday. Will have a busy few days starting with the rehearsal dinner Friday night; meeting up with my old high school friend, Marnie, Saturday morning; the wedding at 2:00 pm Saturday afternoon; then the reception Saturday night. After a trip to some big flea market with all the family on Sunday, we head over to brother Mickey’s house in Etowah, NC (a suburb of Asheville, home of the Biltmore House) to spend the night. Next day sister Sally and I will be driving to Mt. Airy, NC, better known as Mayberry where we will spend the afternoon visiting Floyd’s Barber Shop, the Sherriff’s Office and all the other Mayberry attractions. We’re spending the night at the Mayberry Motor Lodge where there is a tribute to Aunt Bee set up in one of the rooms! Heading back to Ohio on Tuesday, with a few stops along the way at whatever antique shops we happen upon. Don’t yet know what the plans are for the remainder of the time in Dayton, but expect visits to antique malls to occupy a good chunk of the time.

Will try to post an update from Ohio, depending on computer accessibility…